Enabling African Subsistence Farmers to Generate Carbon Credits By Planting Trees

The Climate Change Project was developed in tandem with DLA Piper's Global Sustainability Initiative. Carried out between 2006-2009, the project was designed to enable small groups of subsistence farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to generate carbon credits through afforestation and reforestation that can be sold as credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions. The result, expected to be realized over several years, will be to reduce the devastating effects of deforestation, drought, and famine in these areas of extreme poverty by providing long-term revenue for the small group participants through the sale of greenhouse gas credits.

New Perimeter provided a range of pro bono legal services to the small groups of subsistence farmers in coordination with the International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST). A team of New Perimeter lawyers grappled with the complex legal issues facing the subsistence farmers including land tenure and ownership issues, gender equality and the contractual mechanisms needed to create and protect the rights of farmers in generating and selling the carbon credits to global customers.